


My Boy Carved Coffins

by notkingyet



Category: Moby Dick - Herman Melville
Genre: Canonical Character Death, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 13:23:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1094349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notkingyet/pseuds/notkingyet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ishmael copes with the aftermath of the wreck of the <em>Pequod</em>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Boy Carved Coffins

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Syme](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syme/gifts).



_Buoyed up by that coffin, for almost one whole day and night, I floated on a soft and dirgelike main. The unharming sharks, they glided by as if with padlocks on their mouths; the savage sea-hawks sailed with sheathed beaks. On the second day, a sail drew near, nearer, and picked me up at last. It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan._

_\-- Moby-Dick, Epilogue_

\---

Aboard the _Rachel_ , I spent my idle hours not dozing in the forecastle or lounging in the rigging but sitting atop Queequeg's coffin-buoy (it being tied to the stern of the _Rachel_ as it had been to the _Pequod_ ) and staring out at his cold, blue grave. As I have said before, personal oddities that might catch eyes on land often went unmentioned aboard a whaler. On a ship full of mourners, one more drop of malaise went unnoticed, and the rest of the crew left me to my mope. 

I had already been in the midst of employing my usual solution to these black moods of mine––"Go to sea."––and so I was at a loss for what to do. This left me not exactly happy to join in the _Rachel_ 's futile hunt for her missing children, but lacking any other notion, going along with the current quietly enough. 

Hours melted into days, days passed into weeks, and any hope of finding survivors with them. Captain Gardiner being sensible enough to the reality of our situation but unable to bring himself to give the order left it to his mate to direct the ship to return to Nantucket. 

I had barely disembarked upon that familiar wharf when my mind was assaulted with memories of the last time I had stood upon it––and the man with whom I had been standing. I knew my responsibility was towards the Captains Bildad and Peleg, I being the only living soul who knew what had become of their ship. Likewise I knew, as a compassionate man, I ought to inform the families of those poor souls lost what fate had befallen their husbands, their brothers, their sons. 

But to stand on that wharf, to hear the cries of stevedores and seagulls, to see the points of harpoons scraping the sky and to follow them downward only to find the faces of strangers––this, I found I could not bear. I turned coward and ran to the nearest whaler advertising for a crew. 

The man who signed me on was no doubt frightened by my pale and gasping countenance. More frightening still, to those who did not understand its significance, was the caulked and carved coffin I carried strapped to my back, my only possession apart from the ragged clothes that hung off my bony shoulders. If he suspected me of fleeing the law aboard his vessel, he did not say, though it would have been a reasonable conclusion. Yet I was only fleeing the roaring void in my own breast, hoping to drown it out among the waves once more. 

This ship, which I jumped to in a blind panic, was the _Mary Ann_ , commanded by Captain Watkins, a hard yet genial taskmaster. I resisted learning this information for some time, along with the names of my fellow crewmen. After all, if this were anything like my first whaling voyage, I should lose any friends I made. Better to save myself the pain of that impending loss and keep myself apart from these poor doomed souls from the start, or so I thought. 

My heart leapt into my throat when the first cry of "Thar she blows!" came down from the mast-head. For a moment my mind's eye was a-whirl with images of this ship, too, smashed to splinters, its crew torn apart and swallowed by the curved maw of the ivory leviathan. But my fears proved unfounded––the whale we chased that day was common black, with no patches of snow-white to be found anywhere on his flank or flukes. The harpooneers who struck him, I noted, were less skilled than others of recent memory; regardless, the whale went down easily enough, according to the standards set by his brethren before him. 

As we peeled and sliced and boiled this specimen tied to the side of our ship, his greasy flesh slipped from under the feet of one poor sailor. Down he fell, into dark waters churning with frenzied sharks. Cries went up––"Man overboard!" "Toss the buoy!" "What, the coffin?"––mere background chatter to me as I sprang into motion. Without thought or reason, as if seized by some fevered compulsion, I tore the shirt from my back and plunged into the cold sea after the man. 

I am not, nor was I then, the strongest swimmer in my circle of acquaintances, but I flatter myself that I am a fair one, and on that day my strokes were strong enough to bring me down to the depths my fellow sailor had sunk. I pulled both him and myself back up to the surface to paddle in place alongside the _Mary Ann_ until the coffin I had dragged aboard splashed down into the waves and bobbed over to us. I threw my newfound companion atop it before climbing aboard myself to be hauled in. 

I hardly felt the congratulatory hands my fellow sailors clapped on my back once we reached the deck––whether because the freezing sea had numbed my skin or because I remained determined to keep myself apart from them, I know not. But it proved impossible to ignore the sailor I'd saved crashing headlong into me and throwing his arms around my neck in thanks. 

His name, as I quickly and unavoidably discovered, was Liam. A man only a few years younger than myself, yet green as the homeland of his ancestors when it came to whaling. For days after his rescue he followed me about the deck like a huzzah porpoise in a ship's wake, grin and all. Unperturbed by my impassive silence, he filled it with expressions of gratitude, anecdotes of his own landlocked adventures, and tales he'd overheard from other sailors. Some of these last involved me. One was a falsified story of how I'd come by my coffin-buoy, a graverobbing joke which, once told, had me whirling on him in a fury. The lightning-bolt shock on his face, to discover that his valiant rescuer was capable of so black a mood, drew me up short, and I stuttered an apology before striding away. For once, he neglected to follow. 

That night, we were assigned a watch together. I perched in the rigging and set my alert gaze upon the sea, determined to ignore Liam and my shame at my maltreatment of him. He, being equally determined not to be ignored, climbed up to perch beside me, shoulder-to-shoulder. 

"You needn't have apologized," was his opening. 

My response was but a flashing glance in his direction from eyes deliberately half-lidded in an expression I hoped would provide a veneer of disinterest. It seemed to have the opposite effect, as Liam pressed on. 

"I know I talk too much," he said. "Me brothers give me a good thumping for it back home. Say it'll scare away the lasses." 

I narrowed my eyes at the sea as though I could perceive anything but a sparkling void. 

Liam was silent for his longest moment yet before he added: 

"Doesn't often scare away the lads, though." 

I blinked and turned to peer at Liam's face to glean if he meant what I thought he might. My attention emboldened him and his fingertips grazed my shoulder. 

I had never planned on celibacy in the wake of the loss of my bosom companion. Even in my grief, I knew he would have never understood, much less condoned the gesture. And in that moment, I realized I could do his memory no greater honor than to pass on his open and unassuming offer of friendship to another. 

With this in mind, I took Liam's face in my hands, pressing together our foreheads before doing the same with our lips. 

We had a great squeezing of hands then, the sound of waves lapping against the hull covering our muffled gasps of delighted discovery. It was a foolish place for it––either one of us could have easily fallen from the rigging––but when one is wrapped up in such a friendly pastime, one hardly remembers to care. Both of us found ecstasy sooner than we'd planned, which gave us cause for laughter rather than shame, and we spent the rest of the night lounging together, entangled as much in each other's limbs as the rigging. 

As dawn crept over the waves we disengaged, though our hearts remained tied for many months, coming together with our bodies again and again in shadowed corners all across the ship. This went unmentioned among our crewmates, though it could hardly have gone unnoticed, if for no other reason than their silent and sullen Ishmael had become a laughing creature of light, and the only visible catalyst for such a change took the form of Liam beside him. 

Liam tolerated my gaiety as well as he'd weathered my soul's storm, listening intently as I dissected and hypothesized on the whale calf we'd brought aboard quite by accident, cut out of its deceptively manful mother as we stripped her of her oil. He listened also when I finally felt safe enough in his arms to return to the stories of my own past, of a captain's deadly folly and the brawny harpooneer whose coffin I carried. In turn, I heard his tales of a farmboy with a wanderlust that warred with his homesick heart. 

A profitable year later, our ship full of oil and our pockets full of pay, we returned to the docks of Nantucket; he intending to go into town for a time, perhaps even seek out a passage home, and myself still feeling adrift on land, only finding my footing at sea. Our goodbye was chaste by the standards of our time aboard the _Mary Ann_ , though judging by the hoots of the other sharp-eyed sailors, it appeared less so to onlookers. 

The next ship I leapt to, hardly touching a toe down on the dock, was the _Corinthian_. I made few friends among its crew, and perhaps a few enemies, so it was no trouble for me to wander off and forget to return to her when she put down anchor off the coast of some since-forgotten Pacific Isle. Its native population welcomed me more warmly than my crewmates ever had. Still, while I found companions aplenty, peace eluded me. As near as I was to the fabled birthplace of my bosom friend, I felt compelled to give them news of their prince's departure from this world. 

In this quest, I hopped from island to island like a dissatisfied frog. Everywhere I landed, I inquired after the location of Rokovoko. Each time, my inquiry was met with confused looks and a shaking of heads. Perhaps Rokovoko was truly unknown to them; more likely, my accent had garbled Queequeg's native tongue and the name of his homeland, as I pronounced it, was unrecognizable. 

Though I gained no further information on the kingdom of my dear departed friend, I left each island with a new tattooing. Over the course of the next year or so I became something of a living patchwork quilt, as sailors are often wont to do, covered in the marks of my voyage. I'd hoped to make myself a living copy of the marks on the coffin I still transported with me everywhere I wandered, but thanks to a stern lecture from the first artist I asked to do it, I quickly discovered these markings were not fit for a Christian stranger to wear. After some explanation on my part, of the coffin's previous owner and my own marriage to him, the artist became more sympathetic to my plight and offered to transfer one symbol over from the wood to my skin. This being the same mark my lost friend had used to sign himself aboard the _Pequod_ , I was well satisfied with it, and bore it over my heart. The other markings I acquired––waves and currents over my ribs, interspliced with lines of poetry; thick blue bands of ink forming rows of striped shackles from my knees to my ankles; a great shadowy leviathan 'pon my back, ever following, hunting me as I hunted his brothers; and the more traditional stars, swallows, and anchor among them––were less precious, but no less significant. 

After many tattoos and near as many months, I came to the aforementioned Arsacides. There, my tattoos and my tale made a favorable impression on Tranquo, king of that region. 

I have already described in-depth his whalebone bower, but on the subject of the man himself I have kept silent till now. His physique was robust, and his royal head crowned with black waves, curling around his temples and lending a classically heroic air to his well-formed face. He seemed to find me equally handsome, and flattered me greatly. 

With one glance at my coffin he determined that I was a man of discerning tastes and eagerly gave me a tour of his own treasure trove, bower and all. My amazement at the sight of it did not surprise him, though my enthusiasm gave him cause for laughter––I confess my delight at accessing such a specimen could not have been easily hidden. I thanked him profusely for allowing me to see such a wondrous temple, and may have unthinkingly embraced him for it. He did not mind. In fact, he embraced me in return still more enthusiastically. To do more in the temple itself would have been blasphemy, so we wisely retreated some distance off into the forest, where he graciously allowed me to show him my thanks in a more universal language. In truth, I derived near as much joy from that as from the whale. 

Sadly, Tranquo knew as little of Rokovoko as I did, though he listened to my loving and lengthy description of the man I'd lost. I confess my description was somewhat self-indulgent––as I saw it, while I may never meet my soul's mate again, I could keep him alive in my mind and in the minds of others. Tranquo, being an understanding sort, concurred with this theory and wished me well on my quest. 

Having exhausted all the islands in the region, I begged my way aboard another whaler. The _Artemis_ provided me with an uneventful cruise to Peru. In Lima, I met with Sebastian, Pedro, and several other young cavaliers––those to whom I told the _Town-Ho_ 's story. 

Having already described the _Town-Ho_ , I turn now to the men who formed my audience. Spaniards all, as swarthy as they were congenial––though as I have said, two in particular taking a fancy to me. Sebastian and Pedro were friends long before I arrived in their favorite piazza with a tale on my tongue and a coffin in tow. They'd grown up side-by-side, and shared everything––food, wine, bed. Sebastian, a leanly muscled youth, was the elder by some small number of months, though the stockier Pedro had more guile. 

From the moment I arrived at the Golden Inn, I had twin sets of eyes on me. Almost immediately I was approached by Sebastian and drawn aside for an audience with the two of them. How could I have possibly refused the entreaties of two such friendly and handsome men, who paid for my wine and made the most eager audience I'd ever had for my collection of sea stories? 

The _Town-Ho_ 's tale was not the only one I told in our time together. I related my adventures aboard the _Pequod_ as well, and being well-supplied with wine, spared no detail. Sebastian and Pedro were alternately delighted and scandalized. When it was over, my dark mood resumed. In response to this, they shared a sparking glance over my slumped and sullen form and swept down to revive it with ravenous enthusiasm. Bombarded by affection on both sides, I soon found myself laughing again, and ended the night snug between them like the sea's most satisfied sardine. 

To their dismay, my wandering spirit would not let me stay in their company forever, and I left for the harbor. (This, they allowed only after extracting many solemn promises to return another day.) There I found a pleasant surprise––not only the _Mary Ann_ docked and hiring on experienced seamen, but a familiar tanned and grinning face standing next to her. Liam threw an arm across my shoulders and all but dragged me aboard. He hadn't yet made his way home in the years since we'd seen each other, but in his own words, it was well worth it for the chance to meet me again. In the meantime he'd heard many tales of "the man who carried his coffin," and had re-told of his own rescue at the hands of that near-legendary sailor. I blushed to hear it, which made him laugh and kiss the blush away. 

Apart from our ecstatic reunion, our voyage proved uneventful for many months, till one fair-winded morning we ran across another whaler: the _Trident_. 

"A loverly buoy you've tied to your backside!" her captain called out to us when they'd drawn up alongside. 

Captain Watkins demurred, saying he could not take credit for the decoration; it belonged to his man Ishmael. The other captain said he'd like to meet this man, and this was excuse enough to call for a gam. 

The _Trident_ 's captain was a barrel-shaped man, closer to sixty years than fifty, with a walrus's moustache and a tusk-ivory pipe to go with it. He introduced himself as Captain Marco. 

"That your coffin there?" he asked me once he'd come aboard the _Mary Ann_ , gesturing towards the buoy with the mouthpiece of his pipe. 

"Aye," I told him. 

He smiled impishly and shook his head. "'Tis a sin to lie, boy." 

I tamped down my ill-humor and replied, "No lie, sir." 

"Well, lad, so says you, but my man says it's his, and I've never known him to be carrying tales. So out of the two of you, you look to be the liar." 

The accusation stung like a lance in my chest, and in a tone inappropriate for the addressing of my superiors I said, "Bring your man aboard and I'll show him whose coffin it is." 

Captain Marco laughed heartily. I clenched my fist at my side. He turned and shouted back to his own ship for them to bring someone aboard, a name I couldn't catch. 

A top-knotted head stood out from the cluster of bodies on the _Trident_ 's deck, and its owner disregarded the usual system of using longboats to ferry folk back and forth between ships in favor of taking a running start and leaping across the gap, landing on the deck of the _Mary Ann_ with a tuck and a roll before bouncing to his feet. His aim being a little off, he had to walk some yards to stand before me, which gave me a chance to look him up and down as he approached. Tall, as I have said, and broad-shouldered, with a thickly muscled chest. A Pacific islander, dark skin made darker by tattooing, a body covered head-to-toe in arcane markings that precisely matched the coffin I'd dragged 'round the globe for the last five years. My eyes stuck on those tattoos; I could not bear to follow them up to the face I'd never hoped to see again. 

He said my name. 

I glanced up, caught a glimpse of a familiar honest smile beneath the kindest eyes I'd ever known, and collapsed insensible to the deck. 

I awoke in my own hammock, my berth unusually dim, with a shadowy figure by my side. I called out to it and was overjoyed to find the figure leaning forward and grinning sharply––for it was my Queequeg who loomed over me, enormous, tanned, and tattooed, though with a patch of disquieting darkness under his eyes. 

If I said his name once in those next few moments, I said it a hundred times. He responded, chuckling and repeating my own name back to me. He reached out to touch my face and I grabbed his hand, latched on to it like a drowning man to a thrown rope, pulled myself up to him and threw my arms around his neck, burying my face in his chest to hold back my sobs. This amused him greatly; I could feel his withheld laughter rumbling in his chest even as he stroked my back and kissed the top of my head. At last he took my chin in his hand, tilted it up so he could press our foreheads together, and I laughed, too. 

"But Queeqeug," I asked him, "however did you escape...?" 

When last I'd seen him, he'd been aloft with Tashtego and Daggoo. Then the whale had struck, and he was drawn down into the vortex with all the rest of our crew and ship. I could not bring myself to name all this aloud, but he took my meaning nonetheless. 

Having been sucked under the waves, the hidden current pulled him far off from the site of the _Pequod_ 's disaster. For many minutes he was dragged along with drowning men. He held his breath and tried to signal for others to do the same. Tashtego lasted the longest, but even he succumbed and became yet more dead weight for the sea's sleigh, leaving Queequeg alone to kick his way out of the current and strike upward towards the sun. 

While the sea I saw was flat and unbroken by any sign of whale, ship, or man, the surface Queequeg reached held a small oasis on its horizon. A deserted island, which Queequeg struck out for as soon as he spotted it, lungs and legs both burning and begging for a reprieve. He reached its shores and collapsed, woke who-knew-how-long later, stumbled into its underbrush to feast on small fruits and birds. 

He lived as king of this island for near a fortnight before another ship appeared on the horizon and approached, seeking fresh water for its stores. He found it easy to convince the captain to take him along; the fact that he'd survived trapping such small game for so long was proof enough of his ingenuity and skill. 

The ship returned to Nantucket. There Queequeg searched for other survivors––for while he'd seen many familiar faces in the deep, mine had not been among them. But no one on the wharf recollected my face, and no word of the _Pequod_ had come to the women waiting on shore. (This, of course, was the result of my own cowardice, and I winced to hear Queequeg's retelling of it, though he blamed me not.) So Queequeg settled in at the Try-Pots to wait for news he was certain would arrive. 

Months he waited, all the while making his living with a wheelbarrow, trucking argo to and from the ships. Then, at last, he heard a curious story of a sorrowful sailor who carried a carved coffin everywhere he went. Queequeg doubted very much that there were two such coffins circling the globe, and he grabbed the sailor who spoke of it by the collar––the name of the ship? The _Mary Ann_ , aye––where saw it last? Whaling in the Pacific––any other ships sail such a way? Aye, the _Trident_ ––and Queequeg was off, demanding passage and willing to provide a violent display of his talents to get it. 

So while I searched in vain for his homeland, Queequeg made Captain Marco and the _Trident_ very wealthy indeed. Every ship they passed, he asked for news of the coffin-carting sailor. When he received word, he feigned cannibal wisdom, telling his captain that, oh, so many degrees northward is the traditional hunting ground of my forefathers––and the captain would sail there, trusting the word of the best harpooneer he or any of his crew had known. Thus Queequeg hunted me as he hunted the leviathan, though he hoped the blow he had in mind for me would be a more welcome one. I assured him it was, with words and actions both. 

Satisfied with the story of his survival, I then asked how long I'd lain here. Some few hours was my answer. With some prompting, Queequeg told me what had happened as I'd slept. 

My swoon caused a small commotion. Queequeg in particular was most distressed by my collapse and allowed no other near me. Captain Watkins demanded an explanation––Queequeg told him we were "old friends", that the coffin had been his but all he owned was mine, and freely given. This matter settled, Captain Marco believed the gam to be at an end. 

Queequeg disagreed vehemently. 

Many attempts were made to persuade him that it was unreasonable to expect two whaleships to stand ready for the sake of one man (particularly since that man was a common crewman, not a captain or even a mate), but he remained unmoved. His captain threatened to flog him, to confine him to quarters––I am given to understand that keelhauling was offered as a possibility––yet Queequeg stood firm. He held no regard for any efforts to remove him from my side, and invited any man who dared to try and take him back to the _Trident_ for discipline. Thankfully Captain Marco was a wiser man than his empty threats signified and he gave no such order. It is doubtful that his crew would have followed it if he had. 

And so, with the _Mary Ann_ refusing to part with her Ishmael, and the _Trident_ refusing to part with her Queequeg, and both captains refusing to float dead in the water like a pair of visiting seagulls while I convalesced, we were all at a terrible impasse. 

After much discussion at great volume, Queequeg received a tap on his shoulder. Whirling around with the intent to send the offending seaman overboard, he was met with hands raised in surrender and a young man claiming to be a friend of his Ishmael. This was Liam, who proposed an unconventional solution: if Queequeg would transfer his belongings and services to the _Mary Ann_ , Liam would go aboard the _Trident_ in his stead. 

Liam, unable to reach my side while Queequeg hovered over me, had spent the last few minutes interrogating the _Trident_ 's crew, and discovered their hold to be full to bursting with oil––they were headed home to port. Thus, if he and Queequeg swapped ships, Queequeg could stay by my side, and Liam would be back on his family's farm that much the quicker. 

The two men having agreed to trade places, both captains were satisfied. (Doubtless the _Mary Ann_ gained more in the bargain, trading Liam for Queequeg, but though _Trident_ was loathe to lose such a worthy harpooneer her captain could hardly accuse Liam of being a poor replacement, true as it may be.) Liam only asked that he be permitted to bid me adieu before the ships parted ways. 

At this I bolted upright, to Queequeg's alarm. I hurriedly tried to explain the nature of the friendship I had struck up in his absence, but was interrupted by the arrival of Liam himself, peeking below-decks to say Captain Marco would not wait any longer, and I had best awake soon or be presumed dead for his purposes. 

I introduced my old friend and new quick as I could, lamenting that they could not know each other better. But Queequeg took to Liam as though he'd known him all his life, embracing him and thanking him for taking such care with "his" Ishmael. Liam laughed and called me not at all a burden, or at least not much of one––I may have given him a smack on the arm for that. He minded not. With a kiss (from him to me) and a promise to find him again should he ever choose to return to sea (from us to him), we let Liam go. 

The world had not stopped when the _Pequod_ slipped beneath the waves. Likewise, it did not stop when Queequeg miraculously returned to me. This seemed almost crueler, to my mind. How could a man be expected to concentrate on scanning the horizon for whalespouts when beside or below him worked the other half of his heart, presumed lost and now found? 

This distraction proved near-disastrous when it came time for our first whalehunt together after our lengthy separation. Captain Watkins was wise enough to put us in the same longboat, at least, but despite his shouted orders I could not draw my eyes away from Queequeg, who seemed to be doing better at focusing on the task at hand until, at a crucial moment, I cried out in fear for his life, his eyes locked on mine rather than on his target, and the harpoon struck the whale's fluke rather than his bulk. We were all pulled along for a harrowing Nantucket sleigh ride for nearly a quarter of an hour until Queequeg's lance found the whale's spout and stopped his breath in a gout of blood. 

Drenched in crimson and laughing hysterically, I threw myself at Queequeg. The rest of our little crew likewise cheered for the success of the hunt and their own survival of it, so our embrace went largely unnoticed, and I don't believe even the captain realized the true cause of our brush with death. 

When the whale was carved, boiled, and stowed away––a process taking several days––I drew Queequeg aloft with me into the rigging to discuss our new situation. We were both fearful of losing the other, having already endured a glimpse of a lonelier life and not eager to do so again. But this new business of close scrutiny had already proved dangerous to ourselves and others. Queequeg gently reminded me that he had no wish to die, and therefore would not, barring some catastrophe even greater than what had befallen the _Pequod_. Therefore, there was no need for me to watch him so carefully. I lamented that I could not make him a similar promise. He only smiled, pressed his forehead to mine, and swore to watch for me as he had since the day we'd met. 

With some difficulty, I managed to believe his proclamation of immortality and went about my business aboard the _Mary Ann_. With the addition of Queequeg to our crew, we lost no whales and quickly filled our hold with oil, and within the year found ourselves back in Nantucket. My courage bolstered by Queequeg's presence at my side, I managed to compose a letter to Captains Bildad and Peleg, explaining what had befallen their ship six years ago. My bravery was not quite recovered enough for me to post it with a return address; Queequeg agreed to the forfeiting of his lay in exchange for freeing the both of us from the burden of the _Pequod_ 's fate. This done, we retired to the Try-Pots, and in long-awaited privacy made a proper celebration of our reunion. 

"What now, Queequeg?" I asked later that night, or early that morning, depending on how one thinks of it. 

It took Queequeg longer than I would have expected him to answer. At last, he quietly replied, "You will go a-whaling with me?" 

I stifled a laugh. "On one condition." 

Queequeg waited patiently to hear it. 

"This time, you pick the ship." 

Queequeg's grin shone in the dark for but a moment before his lips were on mine again. I took it as a sign of agreement, a cannibal's "Aye, content."

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to AlterEgon for beta-reading.


End file.
